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John Bogle, the retired chairman of the Vanguard Group, has this little slide that he displayed during a speech this last weekend. It shows inflation adjusted stock market prices bounching above and below a secular trend line representing the growth in real GDP over time. Those prices since 1926 have always regressed to the mean. Right now, about half the distance from the high to the line has been traversed. The expected return from equities over say inflation adjusted treasury bonds is still pretty narrow, and maybe close to zero if the other half of the distance is traversed. I think it imprudent for most folks to have more than half their investments in equities at present, less if the bulk of the present value of your earning power is behind you. JMO.

Brinker's pretty good, but he's not good enough to make this kind of prediction.

I don't believe it was he who made the prediction. I heard that program in early 2000, and he cited another source (I don't know which) indicating the historical "secular" trends thus:

1929 - 1946 -- Secular bear
1947 - 1965 -- Secular bull
1966 - 1982 -- Secular bear
1982 - 1999 -- Secular bull

It's hard to argue with history. Looking at those periods, the 1929-46 time period encompassed the market crash, the Depression and WWII, all typified by great uncertainty.

1947-65 covered the stability of the post-war economic expansion with lots of growth, money, jobs and stability.

1965-82 ushered in the turmoil of the 60s and the Vietnam war. Remember LBJ and his guns and butter approach to war and domestic policy? We could spend billions of dollars redistributing the wealth to people who didn't earn it AND have the war in Vietnam too. What a deal! The fallout of that was the stagflation of the 70s.

Ronald Reagan's tax cuts fueled the growth from 1982-99 (not Bill Clinton as the commie-libs would have us believe.)

Now we've got massive accounting fraud in God knows how many companies, terrorist attacks on American soil, the dot-com bust, and in general a lot of uncertainty. It would not surprise me one bit if it took until 2017 or so to get things straightened out.

It's hard to argue with trends, whether Bob Brinker points them out or not. And yes, I did take his advice and repositioned my portfolio into bonds and money market funds in January 2000, and am damn grateful I did. I see no reason to change, if only to move maybe 5 - 10% to precious metals.

Other than that, I'm staying put.